A Reference is any description of a publication that has not been precisely identified. The publication may be already recorded in the database or not yet, i.e. it requires resolution. A reference may be any of the following:

• citation text, as occurs in references section of a paper, for example
• a bibtex entry
• a selection of bibliographic data, e.g. title, year, and/or authors

Resolution of a reference involves

• searching for the publication in the existing collection
• selecting an existing publication
• adding a new publication if no match is found

When resolved the Reference is bound to the publication

Submitted by Eelco Visser on 25 August 2010 at 11:09

This approach is now used for references (citations) in publications and for adding new publications (to a bibliography).